Category Astronomy/Space

Swedish and Japanese researchers have, after ten years, found an explanation to the peculiar emission lines seen in one of the brightest supernovae ever observed – SN 2006gy. At the same time they found an explanation for how the supernova arose.

Superluminous supernovae are the most luminous explosions in cosmos. SN 2006gy is one of the most studied such events, but researchers have been uncertain about its origin. Astrophysicists at Stockholm University have, together with Japanese colleagues, now discovered large amounts of iron in the supernova through spectral lines that have never previously been seen either in supernovae or in other astrophysical objects...

In the scorching atmosphere of exoplanet KELT-9b, even molecules are torn to shreds. Massive gas giants called “hot Jupiters”—planets that orbit too close to their stars to sustain life—are some of the strangest worlds found beyond our solar system. New observations show that the hottest of them all is stranger still, prone to planetwide meltdowns so severe they tear apart the molecules that make up its atmosphere.

Called KELT-9b, the planet is an ultra-hot Jupiter, one of several varieties of exoplanets—planets around other stars—found in our galaxy...

An international team of astronomers from the University of California San Diego, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the University of Cambridge have detected large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of the oldest and most elementally depleted stars known – a “primitive star” scientists call J0815+4729.

This new finding, which was made using W. M...

New study finds surface waters on early Mars may have been habitable for microbial life. Presently, Earth is the only known location where life exists in the Universe. This year the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three astronomers who proved, almost 20 years ago, that planets are common around stars beyond the solar system...